West Wight Potter 15

The West Wight Potter 15 is an American trailerable sailboat that was designed by Stanley T. Smith and Herb Stewart as a cruiser and first built in 1979.

The West Wight Potter 15 is a development of the British West Wight Potter 14.

Production
The design has built since 1979 by International Marine of Inglewood, California, United States and remains in production. A total of 2600 boats have been completed.

Design
The original English design had a gunter rig and was built from plywood. Stewart used a plywood hull as a plug and created a mold for making fiberglass hulls at the same time the gunter rig was changed to a Marconi rig. The design uses a long sail batten to hold the leech out, giving an appearance similar to a gaff rig.

The International Marine built West Wight Potter 15 is a recreational sailboat, made predominantly of fiberglass, with mahogany wood trim. It has a fractional sloop rig with aluminum spars. The hull has a spooned raked stem, a conventional transom, a transom-hung, kick-up rudder controlled by a tiller and a weighted, galvanized steel centerboard. It displaces 475 lb and carries 165 lb of ballast. The boat is equipped with foam flotation and self-bailing cockpit. With the addition of adjustable twin backstays the boat can be equipped with an asymmetrical spinnaker of 69 sqft or a conventional spinnaker of 85 sqft.

The boat has a draft of 3.00 ft with the centerboard extended and 7 in with it retracted, allowing beaching or ground transportation on a trailer.

A bracket is standard equipment and the boat is normally fitted with a small outboard motor of 2 hp for docking and maneuvering.

The design has sleeping accommodation for two people, with two 78 in bunks in the cabin bow. The cabin has 45 in of headroom and the companionway hatch folds into a small table. A cockpit tent is a common owner addition.

The design has undergone continuous improvement over its production run. A mark II version was introduced in 1982.

The design has a Portsmouth Yardstick racing average handicap of 135.8 and a hull speed of 4.5 kn.

Operational history
The boat has been sailed single-handed from Seattle, Washington to Ketchikan, Alaska and also from England to Sweden, across the North Atlantic Ocean.

In a 2010 review Steve Henkel wrote, "best features: Long-distance cruisers have taken modified versions from California to Hawaii, and from Seattle to Alaska, indicating relatively good stability and ease of handling, despite her tiny lightweight hull and narrow beam, With very shallow draft and a relatively flat V-bottom, she is beachable and easy to launch; her “unsinkable” hull has positive foam flotation. Worst features: She has very little space below (ignoring the hard-to-access space under the cockpit). A centerboard fills the central space in the cabin, so there's no footwell: you must sit cross-legged on the berthtop, and finding a convenient place to use a portable toilet is problematical. Using the head in the cockpit, under a boom tent for privacy, seems to be the most practical alternative. Light-air performance is below average."